TomPaine.com
Greg Palast
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner
fired? Why are our troops still there? Investigative reporter Greg
Palast uncovers new documents that answer these questions and more
about the Bush administration's grand designs on Iraq. Like everything
else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi
economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it.
In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a
101-page
document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department.
Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth,"
it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq
Strategy."
The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before:
the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws
and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly
detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a
new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's
banks and bridges-in fact, "ALL state enterprises"-to foreign
operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when
the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the
Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault
plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright
laws.
And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance-or to the
Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq
would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting
industries." The Plan makes it clear that-even if we didn't go in for
the oil-we certainly won't leave without it.
If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S.
corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.
>From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports
of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable
fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.
Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right.
In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business
political operatives and right-wing muscle groups-including the
Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association-where Norquist
quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.
Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express,
Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union
for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.
Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office.
Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON- NOW MORE THAN EVER"),
Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury,
Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the
post-conquest economic plans-from taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual
property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.
Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the
Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after
seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.
And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury was in on the
drafting of administration blueprints for the post-Saddam Iraq.
According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast
neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when the
White House convened a closed committee under the direction of the
State Department's Pam Wainwright. The group included banking and
chemical industry men, and the range of topics over what to do with a
post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said Aljibury, "It became
an oil group."
This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of
petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry consultant, the secret
team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco.
These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, direct the drafting
of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil
assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained after a year of wrestling
with the administration over the Freedom of Information Act, calls for
Iraqis to sell off to "IOCs" (international oil companies) the nation's
"downstream" assets-that is, the refineries, pipelines and ports that,
unless under armed occupation, a Mideast nation would be loathe to give
up.
The General Versus Annex D
One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and
selling off Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans
put it coldly: "They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz
coming out saying it's going to be a democratic country . but we're
going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn't
vote for."
In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the Bush
administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected ally,
Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just before the
invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-be conquered
nation.
Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic
function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March
2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh
off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would
have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably
within 90 days.
Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The
Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry-let
alone redrafting trade and tax laws-can't be done in a weekend, nor in
90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the free-market
makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It was simply inconceivable that
any popularly elected government would let America write its laws and
auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum industry.
Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist explained when I
asked him about the Annex D timetable, "The right to trade, property
rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic
election." Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit
longer.
New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83
Gen. Garner resisted-which was one of the reasons for his
swift sacking by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on the very night
he arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready
to wing it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul Bremer may
not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, but no one
would question the qualifications of a man who served as managing
director of Kissinger Associates.
Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace-and adding an
extra ring of barbed wire-"Jerry" Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled
meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national elections.
Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. National
elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. The
extended occupation would require our forces to linger.
The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the laws,
regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the
Economy Plan.
On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the Coalition
Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the
image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example, Bremer-only a month
from escaping out Baghdad's back door-took time from fighting the
burgeoning insurrection to sign orders 81-"Patents," and 83,
"Copyrights." Here, Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty
years of royalties would now be conferred on music recording. And 20
years on Windows code.
Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was Norquist's
dream come true: taxes capped at 15 percent on corporate and individual
income (as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress
had rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, with an
electorate of one-Jerry Bremer-the public's will was not an issue.
Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market. Order
12, "Trade Liberalization," permitted the tax- and tariff-free
import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's
largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands
of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by sanctions and
war, this was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S. and
Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the import plan carried out
the letter of the Economy Plan.
This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's
agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United
States. Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company
funded by Cargill.
There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of
copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off
protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government
is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of
Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's
left behind him nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit
each new Iraqi minister-functionaries also approved by the U.S. State
Department.
The Price
The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.
After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He had
little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months before
the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil assets
and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's one fight you
don't want to take on," he told me.
But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled
municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in
Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This
April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S.
soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.
"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general said. "It's their
country, their oil." Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And until it
does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain to
keep it from them.
For the interview with Jay Garner and more details of The Plan, see
"Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," out this
month on DVD. Watch a segment: http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
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